Retail purchases by consumers using credit cards at a retail establishment involves the simple task of swiping the credit card, which contains a magnetic strip, through the card reader machine that the cashier/clerk in the store maintains. This requires consumers to have to carry around many credit cards, either because the consumers has several different credit lines, or because the consumer maintains a separate credit card or debit card unique to each of numerous retail establishments.
This is a well known problem in that it causes bulky wallets. It causes loss of time by the consumer in fumbling through a thick wallet of cards to pluck out the single card needed for a transaction. Since such transactions occur many times a day, this is a significant drawback. Another drawback is the danger and inconvenience of loss or theft of any of the multiplicity of credit or debit cards carried by the consumer. Cards that are stolen or lost contain basic identification data on the face of the card.
Furthermore, newly issued credit cards are typically mailed to the consumer and this fact alone can result in theft or loss of the card. People receive huge amounts of mail nowadays including numerous offers concerning credit cards, to the point where the consumer might not even properly keep track of the offers and which cards or “pre-approved” cards came when. People actually throw out unopened mail due to this burden. Or a busy consumer with a stack of mail might simply forget he or she applied for a credit card and throw out the mail containing the card without opening it. Alternatively, a busy consumer with significant family responsibilities coming home from work might open an envelope containing a newly issued credit card and then place its contents into a stack of other recently received mail in the kitchen with the intent to go through all the mail later and “take care” of the newly issued card at that time. Someone such as a housekeeper can see and take such a card. Furthermore, the consumer might not realize it was taken since he or she has so many other cards and so much other mail. Alternatively, the consumer might set aside the envelope without opening it with the intention of opening it later and then again the mail can be taken.
Several attempts to solve the problems caused by the proliferation of credit cards, debit cards and other plastic used for transactions have been presented in the prior art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,530,232 to Taylor is a multi-application data card that has two modes. In the first mode, a smart card is used comprising a memory with multiple storage areas to cover at least two authorized applications of the card. In the second mode, the card is a conventional credit card that when presented to a cashier, is swiped in the store's card reader and a selection is made by the user, at that point, of which credit card or financial institution's data should be used. This involves changing the card reader commonly found at the check-out counter of stores to accommodate the ability to select which credit card you want to invoke and to link the system to the data source. It also requires retraining or educating store personnel as to the new system.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,700,055 to Kashkashian, a system enables a user to carry one credit card instead of many. The information pertaining to each credit card account is encoded on the card by magnetic means with a semiconductor memory device and a microprocessor based system accepts the card and determines whether the credit card account selected for use by the owner is valid. This system involves significant changes to the card reader
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,402,029 to Gangi, a method is presented involving writing additional data either to a blank magnetic card or to an existing magnetic striped card to consolidate information from multiple credit cards to a single card. The method uses several tracks of data on one universal card but requires a card reader or software to be designed that will look for the data bracketed by special control codes.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,593,936 to Opel discloses a universal credit card having an array of dots and after a card imprint is made, a number corresponding to the proper credit line desired is manually entered onto the charge slip in the array of dots imprinted from the universal credit card. This requires additional manual steps and changes in the method of the store clerk.
www.technovelgy.com discloses a “Chameleon Card” that supposedly functions as a universal credit card but it requires carrying around a “Pocket Vault” to store the information on the user's regular credit cards. Each time the user desires to use the universal credit card for a different credit card, the user has to swipe it through the Pocket Vault in order to put the appropriate information in place.
What is needed is a method and apparatus for operating a universal credit card that does not require the retail establishments to design special or new magnetic card readers or to change the way the store personnel behave. It is also important to have such a method and apparatus that does not require carrying around any new or bulky device.